The five parliamentary constituencies of Seemanchal––Supaul, Kishanganj, Katihar, Araria and Purnea––go to poll on April 24 in the backdrop of the withdrawal of Janata Dal (United) candidate, Akhtar-ul-Iman, on April 15. 

The region has been named Seemanchal as it has border with Nepal, Bangladesh or West Bengal. The five constituencies have a sizeable Muslim population––from 17 per cent in Supaul to 70 per cent in Kishanganj. 

Yet in 2009 only one Muslim, Maulana Asrar-ul-Haque from Kishanganj, could go to Parliament. He is of the Congress party and is contesting once again, while the rest four seats were bagged by the National Democratic Alliance.

Kishanganj has total 14,13,962 voters. Out of this 9,89,773 are Muslims, which is about 70 per cent of the total.

Araria has 6,36,670 Muslim votes out of the total of 15,52,854. Thus it is 41 per cent. Pradeep Kumar Singh of BJP is its MP.

Katihar has 14,00,603 votes. Muslims form 44 per cent of the total, which is 6,16,265. It is represented in Parliament by Nikhil Chaudhary of the BJP.

Out of total 15,10541 voters in Purnea 4,53,162 are Muslims, which form about 30 per cent of the total. Udai Singh––brother of former bureaucrat-turned-politician N K Singh (who was till recently in the JD(U)––is its MP.

In Purnea the Congress has put up Amarnath Tewari, while the Janata Dal (U) has put up the BJP MLA, Santosh Kushwaha, who crossed over only recently.
Supaul has the total voters of 14,81,895. With 2,51,922, Muslims form 17 per cent of the total. The sitting MP is Vishwa Mohan Kumar of Janata Dal (United).
Kamewhwar Chaupal is BJP’s Supaul candidate, while Ranjita Ranjan, wife of Pappu Yadav, is the Congress candidate. The Janata Dal (United) has replaced its sitting MP, Vishwa Mohan Kumar with Dilkeshwar Kamath.

Kishanganj has a history of sending prominent Muslim personalities from outside the region to Parliament. They are former diplomat Syed Shahabuddin on Janata Dal ticket in 1991 and M J Akbar, journalist, of Congress in 1989. Syed Shahnawaz Husain of the BJP won in 1999 defeating Taslimuddin of RJD. Taslimuddin won the seat in 1996, 1998 and 2004 on Rashtriya Janata Dal ticket.

Incidentally, though it was a Muslim-dominated constituency the BJP has done fairly well here. 

In 1967 Lakhan Lal Kapoor of Praja Socialist Party won from Kishanganj, while in 1977 Halimuddin Ahmed won on Janata Party ticket.

This time Dilip Jaiswal of the BJP was very much in the race till Akhtar-ul-Iman of the Janata Dal (United) was in the fray, but after the April 15 development his position has become a bit difficult. However, he is still hoping as there are a couple of Independent candidates belonging to the Muslim community in the electoral battle from here. 

Araria was till its delimitation in 2009 a reserved seat though it has a sizeable Muslim voters.

Taslimuddin of the then Janata Dal won from Purnea in 1989. However, in 1980 and 1984 the seat was bagged by Madhuri Singh, mother of Udai Singh of the BJP, on Congress ticket. In 1977 it was again Lakhan Lal Kapoor who won on Janata Party ticket.

In Katihar the four time MP, Tariq Anwar of the Nationalist Congress Party is in the fray. He had represented the constituency in 1980, 1984, 1996 and 1998––all as the Congress candidate. However, after the formation of Nationalist Congress Party in May 1999 he had not won the seat even once. This is the first time that he is contesting election in alliance with the Congress and Rashtriya Janata Dal.

In 1977 and 1989 Yuvraj won the seat on Janata Party and Janata Dal ticket, while in 1991 by Yunus Saleem of Janata Dal, who had also served as the governor of Bihar. 

The BJP had done well in this pocket mostly because of the division of Muslim votes and the presence of more than one candidates of the community.

Sometimes the division of votes on the lines of Surjapuri, Kulhaiya, Shershahabadi and Sheikh also have its impact on the votes.

But this time the Muslims seem to have closed their rank. The issue is just not the presence of Narendra Modi as it is being played up by a section of media. The movement for the land for the off-campus branch of the Aligarh Muslim University has also helped the people unite. Maulana Asrar-ul-Haque took the lead in it and he is trying to cash it.

Muslims have become alarmed because of the opposition to the university made by the BJP. The double-speak of the Nitish Kumar government has also come under strong criticism. The whole land allotment process was much delayed. Though chief minister Nitish Kumar did try to take credit for the allotment of land the truth is that very few people were ready to recognize his contribution. Instead the Congress party earned a lot of kudos for it.

What is strange is that in such a situation Akhtar-ul-Iman deemed it fit to cross over from RJD to Janata Dal (United) to contest the election. This angered the local population cutting across the caste-lines of Muslims. Both he and Asrar-ul-Haque are Surjapuri. Many of them started seeing it as a conspiracy not only to divide the Muslims but also Surjapuri. The Surjapuris strongly protested Akhtar-ul-Iman’s move and virtually compelled him to pull off.